


Deep Inside

by RandyPandy



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Callbacks to numerous other episodes, Gen, Post-Episode: s12e10 The Timeless Children, s084 The Brain of Morbius
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-04
Updated: 2020-03-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:55:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23011342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RandyPandy/pseuds/RandyPandy
Summary: The one good thing about being in jail was that it gave her time to think without her life at stake.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 122





	Deep Inside

**Author's Note:**

> Please, _please_ don’t read this if you don’t want MASSIVE spoilers for the Series 12 finale “The Timeless Child”.
> 
> This is pretty much me digging past episodes for possible references and having the Doctor try to organize her thoughts.

The one good thing about being in jail was that it gave her time to think without her life at stake.

After trying _everything_ to get out, it had given her time to pace around and simply _process_ everything that had happened.

(She'd attempted to sonic the locks since they hadn't taken her sonic screwdriver away, but a deadlock seal stopped that quickly; after physically attempting to break them, she'd admitted defeat for the time being.)

The Doctor hadn't lied when she'd told the Master that this knowledge hadn't broken her. She wasn't broken.

She was, however, anxious.

The idea that she a scared, lonely child from _who knows where_ that had been found, experimented on, had an entire _society_ founded on her genetics, before she had worked for a secret Division of Time Lords that had later wiped all of her lives...

It was enough to drive her crazy, especially with the fact that the first life in her memory wasn't even her _first life_ , and that she wasn’t even a Gallifreyan, let alone a Time Lord, and that she had, essentially, been _abused_ by the people that she’d thought were her species.

What aspects of her personality had been erased? And what aspects did she instinctively recall?

No wonder she wanted to help scared, lonely children.

* * *

_"So this is how it works, Doctor? You never interfere in the affairs of other peoples or planets, unless there's children crying?" Amy's voice had a tone of disbelief in it._

_The Doctor took a deep breath; the pain of a child_ always _hit him hard, and it made him want to run to Mandy, hug her, and take her away from her source of pain. "Yes."_

_..._

_"Amazing though, don't you think? The Star Whale. All that pain and misery and loneliness, and it just made it kind," Amy explained to him._

_He frowned. "But you couldn't have known how it would react."_

_She smiled at him. "Very old and the last of your kind, you can't just stand there and watch children cry. Sound a bit familiar?"_

_Something struck him deep in his hearts, and he squeezed her against him._

* * *

Little Amelia and the crack. Mandy, on the Starship UK. The Tenza boy, George. Chloe and the Isolus child. The young Adipose.

Even her previous incarnation had found Davros on war-torn Skaro as a lonely child and had shown him mercy. The young Davros had been suspicious after the Doctor had exterminated the handmines, but he had still taken the Doctor’s hand, because he was sure, somehow, that the Doctor wouldn’t hurt him there.

A child should never be harmed or used for someone else’s purposes.

* * *

_"A man... is the sum of his memories, you know. A Time Lord even more so."_

* * *

As _this_ Doctor, she had had fourteen lives that she had memories of. That was a given. But how many other lives had she had that had been wiped? She'd seen at least seven in the Matrix, and then there was "Ruth". She still wasn't sure exactly where "Ruth" fit into place, but if she was one of the lives that she had forgotten, then her personality hadn't changed _that_ much, at least.

Ruth’s TARDIS… well, the TARDIS _had_ mentioned, two lives ago, that she’d gotten the past and future confused multiple times. It was completely likely that if it was the same TARDIS (and she wouldn’t be surprised, given how quickly she and the TARDIS had bonded to each other), that the TARDIS had noticed they were on Earth and had chosen the police box with her chameleon circuit without realizing _why_ she should choose the police box.

That woman on Gallifrey who’d pointed her to her TARDIS… had she known? Had the _TARDIS_ known?

Ugh. Her thoughts were too rapid, jumping from point to point without any sort of logic, and it was making her head spin.

"Right, can’t think about that right now, gotta think about me. I’ll worry about the old girl when I get back to her," she murmured to herself. " How far back does it go? How long have I lived? How many more mes have there been, is there even anymore evidence of other mes running about time and space other than her?"

The Matrix couldn’t be completely trusted, especially not with someone like the Master mucking about in there. Perhaps that was all really just an elaborate lie--

She halted her pacing, something cold going through her, because while she hadn’t thought about it in a long, long time, there _was_ evidence.

* * *

_The Doctor could feel Sarah Jane's fear spiking, but he couldn't break his concentration even for a moment to comfort her. It was taking nearly everything that he had to keep Morbius at bay during their mindbending contest; the other Time Lord appeared to be stronger, and the Doctor knew that if Morbius pushed him too far, then he would be the one to end up dying or severely damaged mentally._

_"How far, Doctor? How long have you lived?”_

_He pushed back, desperate, digging into his own mind to throw_ everything _that he had against Morbius as lives were uncovered._

_His current face, all teeth and brown curls._

_His third face, distinguished with fluffy white hair._

_His second face, bowlcut and playful._

_His first face, a wizened, grandfatherly old man._

_"Your puny mind is powerless against the strength of Morbius! Back! Back to your beginning!"_

_His mind then seemed to enter a haze then as he instinctively continued forcing Morbius back with_ everything _in a desperate bid for survival. Faces that he couldn't recognize flashed through his head._

_A curly-haired man with wild eyes and a mustache._

_A white-haired gentleman with a hat._

_A man with light brown hair and a beard._

_Another man with a salt-and-pepper mustache and a beard._

_A man with silky, longer black hair._

_A clean-shaven, long-faced man with pale blond hair._

_Another clean-shaven, blond-haired man, though the face wasn't nearly as long or his hair nearly as pale._

_One more man with a short black beard and mustache and thick eyebrows._

_For some reason, the more faces that he saw, the more terrified the Doctor felt._

Nononononono-!

_Everything seemed to explode then._

_Morbius stumbled back from the machine first. The Doctor froze for a moment, everything spinning and whirling around him, before he stumbled back and almost fell; he felt Sarah Jane catch him and lay him down as she fretted over him. His mind felt like a Jelly baby that had been chewed on, spat out, and then stomped on with high heels._

_A fluke, he thought, as he felt himself drift away into unconsciousness, trying to push the fear back down. It had to be a fluke... those couldn't possibly… be his lives, after all..._

* * *

Her memories had been wiped. But... they weren't completely gone.

If they had been completely removed from her, then her mind wouldn't have those faces still deep in her brain somewhere, and neither would the Remnants have been able to see her origin.

* * *

_"We see deeper, though, further back. The Timeless Child."_

_Something seemed to stir inside of the Doctor and she stopped digging for a moment to stare up at the Remnant. "...What did you just say?"_

_"She doesn't know!" it said, mockingly._

_"What are you talking about? What can you see?" Why did she want to know about this so badly?_

_"We see what's hidden even from yourself, the outcast, abandoned, and unknown."_

_For some reason, that scared her even more, and the Remnants were ready to take advantage of it._

* * *

There was, at least, some truth to it, because even if she couldn't consciously remember them, it was all still in her. All of it.

“Right,” she muttered. “I just have to figure it all out! But to figure it all out, I have to get out of here first. Sonic, useless right now. Gotta think of a plan, a plan…”

Another look around the room showed that it was still deadlocked sealed, and that there were still no more exits. She furrowed her brow as she looked out of the window, using the stars that she could see to pinpoint where in the galaxy that she might be.

Maybe she would have to wait for an opportunity.

Wonderful.

She _hated_ waiting.

* * *

Her opportunity would not come for a long time, but she was ready to take advantage if it when it did.

An alarm sounded, and her face snapped towards the door as the deadlock seals opened. Wary, she ran towards the door and opened it to look out. Her cell wasn’t the only one that was open, apparently, with several definitely _not_ -Judoon beings running around.

Escaped prisoners. Good, she could work with this.

“Well, what’s one more to the number? Dunno who’s doing this, but I can’t let this opportunity pass me by!” The Doctor darted out of her cell, and spun around for a moment to try to figure out which direction to go. Each of them looked equally promising.

“When in doubt, just _run_!” she told herself, before bolting in front of her. With any luck, she would be able to find one of their transports, use that to commandeer herself back to Earth where the TARDIS hopefully was, and--

She skidded to a halt when her mind felt a certain _presence_ , and, hoping that she wasn’t wrong, she turned a corner and saw him.

"Jack?!"

Captain Jack Harkness grinned back at her, reaching out to steady her as she almost stumbled and fell. "Hey, it’s not everyday a cute girl calls my name out like that. Not who I was going for breaking in here, but you're welcome to come along for the ride, sweetheart."

A bubble of excitement went through the Doctor, and she leapt at him, her mouth turning into a huge smile for the first time in who _knows_ how long before she threw her arms around him.

"Jack, it's me! The Doctor!" she practically squealed in a manner that made her almost cringe.

"Wait, Doctor? Right, I did hear you’re a woman now." Jack's grin grew wider, and he pulled her back for a moment to eye her up and down appreciatively, before planting a kiss on her lips.

Her eyes widened, but she let him have the moment; Jack _always_ greeted people like this, and she had been starved for affectionate touch since she had last seen the Fam. After a few seconds, she pulled back, gasping for air. “Oi! Behave, you!”

He had the nerve to give her that cheeky grin again. "I can _definitely_ work with this. Look at you! You look amazing! I'll have to get a better look later, though – heard you were stuck in here, so I came to bust you out." He winked. “Can’t have my friend locked up in jail, can I?”

Hope went through her for the first time in who knows how long, and she grabbed his hand, not even caring about _how_ he’d found out that she’d been trapped here. "C'mon, then!"

They ran.

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly, if Jack isn’t the one to break the Doctor out of space jail, then I’m going to lose my mind.
> 
> Also, Brain of Morbius is one of my favorite Classic Who episodes, and always was, because I always wondered what the implication of other Doctors had meant (I never considered they were Morbius’s like a lot of fans; doesn’t make sense). Chibnall might not be the best writer, yeah, but honestly? That bit about the Doctor was top-notch lore addition and contradicts absolutely nothing. :)


End file.
